About

Schmidt’s Meat Market started in 1947 when Gerhardt and Esther Schmidt purchased a small, one-man custom butcher shop in Nicollet, Minnesota. Gerhardt had previously worked in a meat market and locker plant in Arlington, Minnesota giving him the experience to provide custom processing for the area farmers. At that time, the building was comprised of a smokehouse, production area, a 12-foot meat counter and the apartment where Gerhardt and Esther lived and raised their two sons. While their primary focus was custom processing, they steadily grew the retail business. They had one employee.